Samer Kalaf

Rick Reilly's stance and logic regarding the Washington Redskins was dumb, but a letter to the editor from the Washington Post has raised the bar in eye-rolling things written about the Redskins' team name.

ESPN's Rick Reilly just published a column about the controversy over the racist nickname of…
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According to Jason Fornwalt of Hagerstown, Md., the New York Yankees' team name is as offensive as the Redskins. Yes. Yankees. Jason actually set aside some time to write about this issue and send it to a major newspaper. He even refers to it as the "Y-word."

I find it strange, as momentum builds to change the name of the Washington Redskins, that no one has proposed changing the most offensive name in American sports: The New York Yankees.

Why the Yankees, you ask? It’s quite simple. The term “yankee” was created by the British to mock the American colonists during the Revolutionary War. It was an insult. And the history of its use — unlike Redskins — is not in dispute.

As if the term (which I will from here on refer to as the “Y-word”) wasn’t offensive enough based on its use during the Revolution, it was used again, during another war, to insult largely white Northerners. That’s right: The Confederate States of America used the Y-word as an insult as well. In fact, the Y-word is still used today in the South, to refer — usually in a disparaging manner — to Northerners.

Given the fact that the Y-word has an indisputable negative connotation throughout its history, and the fact that it’s still used as an insult today, why isn’t there a push to change it? And, ultimately, is any perceived insult about skin color, or skin thickness?

So: Jason says the "Yankee" was used disparagingly towards "largely white Northeners," pegging that as a basis for an insult based on skin color. He seems to forget the reason it was mainly used on white people—the non-whites were slaves. I'd wager that a slave was called worse things than "Yankee."